MONEY TREE (6 page)

‘
Ted, you’re the name. Folk still recognise you.’ He said it like he was amazed. ‘We want the Ted Saddler by-line on this. Besides, it’s been a while since you were out in the field. Blow the cobwebs away. Get out of the bars and get some sun on you.’

Ted
eyed Stan carefully. It’s what he wasn’t saying that interested him. That, and not looking at him straight. The throwaway comment about his drinking habits had been too casual. Ted knew he hadn’t been getting outstanding ratings lately, but hey, everybody goes through a patch, you know? Sometimes the stories just aren’t there. You can’t invent them. Well yes you can, but that way lies madness and public execution when you’re found out.

Maybe he ha
d lost some of his colour; his writing felt like he was drawing blood at times. But that had nothing to do with the booze. He made it a rule never to touch a drop before 6pm – unless it was in the line of duty or weekends. He could still punch out a column on just about anything you care to name. Twenty minutes. Word count on the button. Readable. Which is more than you could say for some of the website jockeys today. They didn’t give a damn about grammar, and thought a tweet said it all.

‘As a matter of fact Stan, I may have found something. Something that would make the front page. And I don’t mean just the city section. This is potentially big. And it’s right here in River City.’
Stan looked like he’d never seen Guys and Dolls.

‘Tell me about it.’

Stan’s tone said he’d heard these sort of claims from every jerk with a column to fill.

‘I can’t say anything right now. But I’ve got a contact at top level that might be ready to blow up the whole thing.’

‘In the People’s Bank?’

‘
Better. Gimme a couple of days and I’ll have something for you.’

Which is why
Ted stayed on a little bit longer and did some fast finger work on the keyboards. The top level interest Stan mentioned wasn’t too unusual but something nagged at Ted’s memory. He called up the corporate web site of Global American and clicked on the list of non-executive board members. The usual assembly of the great and the good from other industries and institutes: economists and an emeritus professor from Stanford, the former chair of Pricewaterhouse Coopers and so on. But one name stood out: Martin Lanesborough, Chairman of American News Corporation, the holding company of Ted’s own newspaper, the New York Tribune.

Ted
thought for a moment then pulled up his email and fired off a note. Erin was a late bird. She agreed to meet at 8.00 the next night, at a cosy dive he knew, up off 82
nd
and Columbus. It wasn’t Le Cirque or any swank restaurant that Erin Wishart might frequent. And almost certainly the wrong side of the park. But it was home turf for Ted. Gave him an edge. High intensity people like Miss Wishart had always figured prominently on his list of people never to have a drink with. He didn’t need that kind of pressure. So why did this feel like he was making a date or something?

T
he three women paused at the southerly entrance to the valley, on the last little rise on the road. The village was a mile away, like a pile of shoeboxes fallen from the shelf of wooded hills rising to the east. Thin ribbons of smoke rose from the boxes as though a big fire smouldered underneath, ready to erupt and destroy everything and everyone. The hard lines of the rooftops were punctuated by the foliage of trees. A little apart from the main village sat a small clutch of huts, with walls of wood and roofs of straw cones. These belonged to the Dalits, the Untouchables. 

Where the river used to run a rock-hard
groove a hundred feet wide scarred the length of the valley and ran past the foot of the village. Like the cast skin of a giant python. The central planners made the river take a new course, so that higher up the valley it would cut left and join the river on the other side. They said it was to help make the dam work. And when the dam was working everyone would have electricity and fresh water, and the fields would be even better irrigated than before.

None of it happened of course. They built the dam but ran out of money for the water pipes.
Great cracks opened up in the mud and will never heal. It made house building and repair much harder. They killed the land and maybe they killed the village too.  No one looked that way any more.

For a moment, and without telling the others, each of the three women with her newly opened eyes, felt a pang of shame for their poverty. As they drew closer, the sweet commingled smell of  animals, spices, human waste and that special tang of the dung fires wafted at them. A unique combination that separated their village from any other. They would know where they were if they’d been brought here blindfolded. It swept them up in relief and gladness to be back in familiar territory. S
hame vanished and all at once they were desperate for their own tiny homes and families.

They thought it was too late to cause a great stir, that they would keep their story till the morning. But their arrival was soon spotted and news travelled like a scalded dog through the shantytown. Women dipped out of their doorways and greeted them with hands clasped together and soft calls of ‘
namaste’. They wanted to know how it had gone. A few men eyed them cautiously as though wondering what they’d become and how they’d changed after such a trip. They noticed the dust up to the knees, like grey socks, and the tiredness in their gait.

They knew
tall Anila and were already wary of her. She was trouble. Hadn’t she walked out on her husband? Why did some women mind a beating so much? They saw Divya, thin and wiry, her bare arms lean but muscled, and her fine hands clutching the fold of her sari round her oval face. But all the men’s eyes began at and kept returning to the brown and cream figure of Leena. She had a temple dancer’s poise and grace, and her body was slim yet rounded. But it was the bright perfection of her almond eyes and lips like a split cherry that sent their blood racing. Men made fools of themselves to see Leena smile.  

Some curious children tagged along and a scrawny
hound or two sniffed at their legs, turning them into a procession. Goats bleated as they were smacked out of the way and cows lay chewing in the hard shadows. Smoke from early evening cooking fires was already spilling into the street and charging the air. They walked past unmarked and barely delineated streets and alleys. No-one had addresses.  Everyone knew everyone else and had a map of the village in their mind, with every hut occupied by a relative or friend or, occasionally, an enemy. The three smiled and returned the
namastes.

‘Fine. Yes, we went to Delhi. Yes, we saw the bank.’

Anila answered for them as she was escorted to her hut by her companions. In a rare moment of spite, she wished Dilip could have been here to see this. How amazed he’d have been! She would have shown him that it wasn’t his grand ideas that had come to fruition, but hers. And then the anxiety settled again like a heavy shawl, and her breathing quickened. Sometimes she wondered if she were being made a plaything of Shiva; being set high, just to be cast down even harder.

‘We
are tired. We will talk at the pumps in the morning,’ said Divya from inside her blue hood.

In fact Divya wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or not to be home. She missed her two sons of course, and was desperate to see them again. But a peculiar melancholy had taken hold of her. She’d forgotten about the fearful arrival in the city the first night. All she could see was red silk trimmed with gold, and bracelets of gold and silve
r. The bustle and commotion, and the vitality and excitement. A taste of a life more exotic. A life she might have led but for the vagaries of the gods. The same gods who’d crippled her husband. Divya always presented herself as hard headed and sensible. Maybe that was why her husband thought her so cold. But something in her had been touched by this grand trip, something had stirred and she was afraid either to let it loose or to bury it for good.

Pretty Leena was bursting to tell to her friends. She grinned as she walked.

‘You shall see. Oh, you shall see!’ she called out.

She thought of her husband, Chandan, and whether he would still be angry with her for setting out on such a wild notion, even though they’d had no other choice. Not since they’d lost their field. Leena knew she could charm him round – that was her greatest strength – but she would have liked him to see her as a sensible business woman as well as his fantasy girl. She conjured images of Chandan bathing her feet and worshipping her as the saviour of the family.

Their weary legs felt the steady gradient as they pushed up the lane towards Anila’s home. They embraced outside Anila’s mud-coated brick hut with its wooden door and its two square window holes either side. They helped her shake the dust from her sari and flicked at the coating on her feet and ankles. They were reluctant now to break the bonds and the spell of travelling because the next steps were so terrifying. Their voices carried. The door opened and an old woman stood outlined in the back glow of an oil lamp within. She had a hand on the shoulder of a small girl who squirmed in anxiety and delight at seeing Anila. Her thumb was full in her mouth. Anila turned from her travel companions and bent down and was almost knocked over by her daughter’s lunge and tight embrace. She stood up, still holding her small smiling burden, and embraced the old woman.

‘We did it Mother. We went to the city and we saw the bank and we got the money. Everything
will be better now.’ She said it like she believed it. She had to believe it. There was no going back.

The old woman looked at her daughter and searched her face. She had always feared for her daughter, especially since her own husband had died and there was no longer the two of them to control her. There was a spirit in her that seemed to go begging for trouble. There was a look about Anila that her mother hadn’t seen for two years. Not since she’d told her she could no longer take her husband’s beatings. Even if it meant giving up her reputation and living the rest of her life as poor and excluded as a Dalit. The old woman’s face held a look of love and fear. Fear for what her daughter was getting into. Fear that she’d reached too far and that disappointment would follow as surely as tomorrow’s sunrise.

N
ext day Ted made an effort. He unearthed smarter duds from the reject pile in the spare room and dropped them at the corner laundry before heading into work. He picked them up that evening and found them steamed and pressed, but there had been no time to take out the waistband. Nor had he found time or inclination for a haircut. The best he could do was shower and shave, and comb his mop to almost civilised standards. As he posed in front of the wall mirror in the sitting room, he realised how long it had been since he’d dressed for anyone. Maybe if he’d gone to the trouble more often with Mary? It prompted yet another re-run of their last evening together. . .

From deep in his favourite armchair, he’d been holding out his big arms seeking absolution, salvation. But this was no preacher in front of him.

‘We can work on this.’ E
ven he could hear the doubt in his voice.

‘We’ve tried,
’ she replied.

‘Not enough
.’

‘You can’t change,
Ted. It’s how you are.’

‘You used to
like
who I was. What’s different? Come on, spit it out.’

Mary stood in the doorway, hands on bony hips, inspecting him. Behind her, bags and boxes lay piled in the hall. None of the other rows had reached this point. A TV ball game droned in the background. It was drizzling outside and growing darker, but no one reached for the light switch.

‘You don’t want to know.’

She pushed her chin-length black hair behind her ears. He loved her ears.

‘I need to.’

It had to be said. Had to be heard. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook.

She folded her arms, always a bad sign in these last destructive months.

‘What’s over there?’

So that’s where this was going.

‘It’s my desk.’

‘It’s your obsession. What’s on your desk?’

‘Oh, come on. You know what’s on it. Don’t blame the damn book.’

‘It’s been there how long? Eight years? Ten? You’ve been writing the Great American novel. . .’ She carved quote signs in the air. ‘. . .
forever
, Ted. And you’re never going to finish it, far less get it published! You’re either at the newsroom or you’re at your desk. You haven’t been with me in ten – Goddamn - years!’

‘If that’s all it takes, no problem. Look.’

Ted shot his body out of the embrace of the chair and lumbered over to his desk. He grabbed one of the piles of manuscript and took it, pages fluttering, into the kitchen. He opened the door to the garbage bin. He stuffed the pages in. Called her bluff.

‘See! It’s done. It’s history. I’m all yours.’

He pushed his hair back off his face, and wiped his brow which was already beading with sweat – the aircon in the ancient apartment block had broken for the third time that week. He gave her his best smile, his college boy smile, the smile she’d always found cute. Mary stood looking at him, eyebrows up, hands back on hips.